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Recreational fishing is commonly allowed in some areas of multiple-use marine parks but little is known about how fishing effort varies over time. To examine inter-annual and spatial variability, a time-series (1999–2009) of fishing effort was collected at the Jervis Bay Marine Park (JBMP) (Australia). Compared to a previous baseline (1989–1990), effort had doubled to tripled for comparative months, when sampling recommenced during the consultation period for zoning the park. Following the 2002 implementation of the zone plan, effort generally declined, so much so that in February 2009 fishing effort was 88% less than what was observed in February 2000. This decline was not associated with a model, based on the spatially explicit fishing effort data collected during the 1999–2002 consultation period and the pragmatically designed zoning plan, which predicted only 18.5% of fishing effort would be displaced by …